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Shedding the CLASS program for long term care will make the new health care law lighter and stronger. The extra fiscal pounds were unnecessary and would have drained time and effort away from implementing the new law. It would have created a new public insurance program with unstable financing.

The administration is rightly focused on securing the gains from the new health care law and preserving Medicare and Medicaid for the long term. That will come down to one thing: restraining health care costs. The President needs to use every opportunity – from the super committee to the next election – to push for common sense cost restraints such as preventing costly chronic diseases, means-testing Medicare, and piloting health courts to reform medical malpractice.

Sooner or later, Republicans will have to join together with Democrats to face the common enemy of exploding health care costs. Until then, the administration will have to show how to shrink the federal waist line so the nation is in good fiscal shape to do more in the future.

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